The Leaning Pile of Books is a feature where I talk about books I got over the last week – old or new, bought or received for review. Since I hope you will find new books you’re interested in reading in these posts, I try to be as informative as possible. If I can find them, links to excerpts, author’s websites, and places where you can find more information on the book are included.

This week’s post is a short one since the only book that came in this week was a book I won from a Goodreads giveaway.

First, just a brief update about reviews and guests coming up. Alex Hughes, author of Clean, is going to share a guide to the world in the Mindspace Investigation series next week. I finished reading Clean last weekend, and I’m going to start on my review today so that can go up next week as well. A review of The City’s Son by Tom Pollock is in progress, and my next review after that will be the book I’m reading right now, The Tainted City by Courtney Schafer (which I am enjoying so far!).

I remember hearing a lot about this book a couple of years ago, and most of my Goodreads friends really liked this one. One of the cover quotes mentions it’s dark fantasy and the reviews also mention it being character-driven so it sounds like something I might like!

In the UK and Australia, the title of this book is The Painted Man. The Warded Man is available in mass market paperback and ebook and as an Audible audiobook (and you may be able to find a hardcover, although that doesn’t seem to be as easy to find now as the other formats). The second book in the series, The Desert Spear, is also available. The Daylight War, the third book, is scheduled for release in February 2013.

As darkness falls after sunset, the corelings rise—demons who possess supernatural powers and burn with a consuming hatred of humanity. For hundreds of years the demons have terrorized the night, slowly culling the human herd that shelters behind magical wards—symbols of power whose origins are lost in myth and whose protection is terrifyingly fragile. It was not always this way. Once, men and women battled the corelings on equal terms, but those days are gone. Night by night the demons grow stronger, while human numbers dwindle under their relentless assault. Now, with hope for the future fading, three young survivors of vicious demon attacks will dare the impossible, stepping beyond the crumbling safety of the wards to risk everything in a desperate quest to regain the secrets of the past. Together, they will stand against the night.